Modern research has divided man into many unrelated
compartments for study, in one of which the whole man can fit. Man has
been studied as a mass of matter (biochemistry), as a mechanism (physics,
physiology), as an animal (evolution), as a tangle of observable reactions
(experimental psychology), as a jungle of instincts (psycho-analysis),
as a composite of cells (histology), as a subject of diseases (pathology,
medicine, psychiatry, abnormal psychology). Religion has often treated
his soul without consideration for his body (asceticism, etc.). Many deny
that he has a soul, and few can account for the fact that all the processes
and parts which pertain to man are a unified whole - the accessories to
his personality. His cells and organs and the elements of his experience
are bound into a unity and are subordinated to a distinct and individual
end by a creative force or organized power which, in the New Church, we call
his Soul or Spirit.

Man cannot be described in terms of any one science
or from any one limited viewpoint. Man transcends not only Space but Time.
He as a Personality or Individual is not circumscribed by matter. As brought
out so powerfully by Dr. Alexis Carrel in his "Man, the Unknown" (445),
modern techniques of research "do not grasp things having neither dimension
nor weight." (446) That writer also believes
that science must extend its data to admit the experiences of "great mystics"
and others who have travelled in the almost unknown regions of spiritual
or psychological states. Perhaps he includes among these the Biblical writers
and seers.

Certainly, Swedenborg was a man whose wide scientific
knowledge and fidelity to a scientific method yet allowed him to see Man
as a whole and the body of man as a marvelous assemblage of all nature's
substances and powers, unified to a central purpose, operating, as to all
its powers and parts, in a harmonious rhythm.p. 97

Swedenborg's studies of Man give a universal philosophy
of the Human Organic. Yet in order to understand his philosophy we must
reap impressions not only from one work or group of works, but from his
whole experience; thus both from the "philosophical" works, and from the
revealed Writings.

`````````````````````````````

The purpose of the present text is to present Swedenborg's
philosophy of Man as an Organism. This includes more than man's natural
body. For man is a double being, a spirit clothed with a body. The spirit
is not a mere abstraction or a mere process within the body, but is a distinct
substance and thus a subject. And being a substantial organism it can be,
and is, immortal.

Swedenborg's philosophy of the human form goes farther.
It outlines the correspondence of the body of man to the larger human forms
of society, and especially enters into- the parallels between the body
of man and the heavens considered a kingdom of uses. This correspondence
is discussed in chapter IX.

The importance of viewing the body as a whole, lest
we be lost in a mass of particulars resulting from modern specialization,
is frequently stressed by Swedenborg. The following notes are summaries
of his Introduction to a proposed work on the Brain:
(447)

a) A sphere of effects: the body proper, the viscera of the abdomen
and the thorax, the organs of motion and the external senses.
b) A sphere of causes: the cerebrum, the cerebellum, the medulla
oblongata and the spinal marrow; thus the nervous system as a whole.
c) A sphere of ends or principles: the cortical or grey substances,
regarded as to its individual constituents or "glands".(450)p.
98

The organs of sense are to receive the phenomena
of the ultimate, circumfluous world, and carry to the soul the things which
impinge on the body.
The organs of motion are to manifest the
actions of the body, and to bring down from the soul such actions as are
natural and such as are the results of volition.

The muscles are therefore placed in the outer
parts of the body. The organs of sense are partly places around
the whole outer surface of the body (touch), and partly so as to meet particles
and modifications of our surrounding world which are conveyed towards them.

For the production of effects, the organs of motion
and sense require blood which is the essence of the sphere of effects.
Blood requires a general fountain or heart, as a
center of intake and outpour, a center of the circle or circulation.

Blood requires, for its maintenance and renewal, the viscera,
by which it is prepared, purified and renovated. The viscera thus receive
the food, masticate it, convey it to the stomach, digest it into chyle,
perfect this and turn it into blood. Smaller viscera are necessary to introduce,
to dissolve menstrua, etc.

Motion is necessary for exciting the organs
to their uses: hence the lungs provide such a suitable motion.

Each set of viscera in the body is distinguished
by protecting walls of muscle and by sustaining bones. The specific uses
of the three sets of viscera are different: The abdomen prepares
chyle and blood. The thorax contains the sources of the determinations
of the blood (heart) and of motion (lungs). (The heart is also a source
of motion). The head contains organs of sense.p.
99

The brain is called the Common Sensory and the Common
Motory.
It is separated from the lower sphere by cranial
walls and vertebrae. There is no communication with the lower body except
through foramina or passages in the bony structure which envelopes it.

The brain gathers and folds together the fibres
which spring from the principles (the cortical glands) and sends them
out so as to keep the organs of sense and motion under the intuition
and rule of the soul.

It elaborates a certain lymph or kind of purer
blood (called in general "the animal spirits") which is conceived,
worked up, and produced in the cortical substance.
This lymph, together with the chyle, produces
the red blood of the body; making the brain the mediate cause and the efficient
cause of the blood. The following parts of the brain collaborate in this
work: the corpus callosum, the fornix, the two lateral ventricles, the
third ventricle, the aqueduct of Silvius, the corpora quadrigemina, the
pineal gland, the choroid plexus, the infundibulum, the pituitary gland,
etc.

The Brain as a whole is divided into three regions:

The Cerebrum, which presides over voluntary
sensations and actions. The
Cerebellum, which is set over those
sensations and actions which are involuntary or natural, and the Medulla
Oblongata and Medulla Spinalis, which preside partly over voluntary
and partly over natural sensations and motions, since they consist of fibres
from both cerebrum and cerebellum, besides having fibres of its own.p.
100

Into this sphere penetrates the senses of the body,
especially the sense of sight. Out of it flow actions according to the
fibres. There also motion and sense are in their beginnings (principles).
And there are the first and last termini of the fibres. (The spirituous
fluid is elaborated in the "simple cortex" of each gland.)

Each cortical gland is distinguished into three more
"spheres", which are likened to the celestial spheres of the sky.
a) The inmost sphere is like a "holy of holies"
where the soul resides. It is the "ideal" of the universe (or body) which
it animates, and is invested with the power of governing all things. The
soul is the only living essence whence the rest derive their life, It inhabits
this "inmost heaven of nature" like a deity in its microcosm. And thence
there is an ascent to the "supreme mind" (which belongs to the spirit itself).
b) The second "celestial" sphere is where our inmost
sensation with intellection, the rational mind and will, reside. It is
the outer court and council chamber of the soul.
c) The third sphere of the gland is the seat of
the interior sense of sight with its imagination, of the first memory,
and of the Animus, and also of the determinations of the soul into act.
By these three spheres the soul is girt about with
organical togas for its protection.

5. The way to a knowledge of the soul.

Reference reading: Animal Kingdom, Prologue.

The lower spheres of the Body and the Brain must
be studied and understood, before the spheres of the soul can be unravelled.
"From Athens or the Lyceum (the Body?) we have to ascend to Parnassus,
the seat of the seven virgins; and after having tasted the water of its
spring, we may attempt the way to Helicon or to the hall where the soul
dwells. Three shrines are there, and through heaven or the sky only is
there an entrance to the holy of holies; and of what takes place there
our mind can become cognizant only in a universal and not in an individual
manner. Let us therefore take a broad view of the things below, and let
us elaborate doctrines by the aid of which we may be enabled to take a
universal view of the individual things which are around and below. And
thence l et us raise the sight of our mind towards the higher things which
will then be nearer, and let us regard with veneration the heavenly
things which will then meet us, and let us worship things Divine. This
is the analytic ladder which I intend to ascend, well knowing that no other
road to Olympus is granted to human minds." (454)p.
102